Blax Xtar
by LazerTH
Summary: Two heroes raid a Malta stronghold to rescue one of their own. While trying to escape, they find themselves way in over their heads, but receive help from an unlikely hero.
1. Rescue?

The sun broke the horizon with piercing light, swathing the ocean in brilliant gold. George Harkness drank it in, peering at the day star from under his navy blue cowboy hat. He leaned against the hard, cold left leg of his Hercules-class Titan, pulled down his black cotton mask and lit a menthol cigarette.

Then the alarms shattered the morning. He placed his custom-made, tooled leather boot on the Titan's knee to vault into the open cockpit. Before he turned the big lug around, there were at least twenty explosions on the far eastern border of the base.

"So much for subtlety," he grimaced, ignoring the little flashing 'No Smoking' sign on the heads-up display. The three Sappers around the feet of the Titan were watching and waiting.

"Think the battle will come to us?" Tammy hoped.

"Our orders are clear: defend the western dock," Gerald droned, warming up his Bio Energy Feedback Inducer gun. In short, it was a gun that severely diminished your performance in battle and otherwise.

"I forgot to charge my cell phone last night."

George, Tammy and Gerald looked askance at Burk, who shrugged and put away his Blackberry.

"Well, I did."

The explosions were moving steadily towards the central building, throwing debris, dust and black smoke into the crystal dawn sky.

"Funny," George commented, his cockpit already filled with flavoured smoke, "Those're _our_ missiles. Wonder who they're blowing up?"

"Good morning, gentlemen."

The four Malta Operatives rounded on the owner of the voice, who had literally appeared out of nowhere. He was a short, thin man of Asian descent with a black ponytail, wearing a grey leather V-cut trench-coat. He held no weapon, but the Sappers blasted him with their draining guns. One of those machines could drain the power core of a Zeus-class Titan in seconds, but the mystery man just smiled.

"Please."

He held up his bare hands. In a flash of blue light, the Titan's power core registered nil. The HUD disappeared, leaving George in smoky darkness. Gunfire clattered for a brief moment while he braced both feet against the heavy titanium cockpit.

"Did you get 'im?" he asked, squinting in the sudden brightness.

"No," said the mystery man, pistol-whipping George, causing the cig to fly from his mouth. Holstering his dual pistols, he dragged the Operative onto the dock beside his unconscious compatriots before hopping into the driver's seat. He flicked the cig into the ocean.

"Mun reporting," he said, placing his hands onto the controls. The Titan thrummed with life, its cockpit slamming shut once more. Mun coughed, turning on the air scrubbers. "I'm heading for the base now."

"_I'm inside the base,"_ Mun heard a male voice inside his head, _"Heading to Containment."_

"Why did you bring me along again?"

"_Crack."_

"Ah."

Mun stomped the Titan into the base, waving hello to the Operatives who were following orders, defending their positions. They waved, calling him George, some asking whether he had any cigs to spare. He made the Titan shrug, palms open empty, and moved along. Once safely ensconced behind base doors, he trudged towards Containment. The base Operatives barely gave his Titan a passing glance. He followed his teammate's progress on the HUD, which had a handy three-dimensional map of the interior along with live camera recordings.

A top hat whizzed by a camera, leaving two unconscious Operation Engineers in its wake. The Gunslingers on the other side of the room took aim but just could not get a bead on their target, who descended upon them, his high-collared cape billowing as he passed their fallen bodies.

"Wan, don't attack the Hercules Titan."

"Which Herc- oh."

Mun popped the cockpit, confronting the well-dressed samurai, whose glowing white Vanguard blade was inches away from severing one of the mech's legs. Wan stood upright from his warrior crouch, clearing his throat.

"That thing still have missiles?"

"Full complement of Swarm and Incendiary."

"That's the cell," Wan pointed with his katana at the reinforced door on the other end of the corridor. "Backup's on the way."

"Ours or theirs?"

"What do _you_ think?"

"Cover your ears."

"Give me crack first!"

Mun held out his right hand at Wan, blasting him with blue light. Grinning, Wan retreated at high speed to the side, doing as he was told as Mun snapped the cockpit closed. A torrent of Incendiary Missiles scorched the door, partially melting the steel structure. After waiting several seconds for the flames to subside, Mun unloaded every Swarm Missile at the door. Several very loud detonations later, it bent inward, but did not break.

"Backup's here. Break that thing down!"

"Yeah, yeah."

While Wan dispatched the new wave of Operatives, Mun put the Titan into flying gear in order to tackle the remains of the door. The door blew in two, shrapnel embedding itself in the bulletproof glass of the containment area. Inside, the two-legged centaur floated, asleep within the stasis field. He had reddish-brown hair and a little goatee.

"We meet at last, Ossyra."

Mun blocked the entrance with the Titan's body so that he could attend to the control panel in peace. There were already numerous Swarm and Incendiary missile explosions down the corridor, where he had left Wan. He placed both hands on the keyboard, peering at the screen.

"A password? How quaint."

The nanoscopic machines coursing through Mun's body filtered through his pores and into the military hardware, bypassing the pitiful encryption. They assured the dazed and confused processor that they did, indeed, have administrator access, and so coerced it into shutting down the prison. The two-legged centaur flopped, still asleep, while the glass cylinder receded into the floor.

Mun stood over the centaur's body. He flung out his left hand, suffusing the sleeping creature with gold light. He flung out his right hand, supercharging with blue light. Ossyra flared awake, his burning aura reasserting itself. He already had a fireball sitting in one hand, aimed at Mun.

"Whoa, horsey! I'm a friend. Wanrikken is here with me."

"I'm not a horse," Ossyra groused, cracking his neck both ways, but he extinguished himself. His two hooves clopped across the floor, taking him to the Hercules Titan. The long braids behind his pointed ears twirled as he turned his head this way and that, trying to discern the source of the gunfire and explosions.

"What's going on behind there?"

"My name is Mun. Wan is dealing with Malta behind this robot."

He tilted his head.

"Wan, I'm putting this thing in reverse."

"_How much time has passed?"_ spoke Wan's voice in his head. Ossyra jumped, because he could hear him, too.

"Three minutes and twenty three seconds."

"Hey Wan!"

"_Hey Ossyra! Why were you captured?"_

"Man, hearing your voice like this is freaky. I was just following a tip. Turns out it was a trap!"

"_Good grief. Why don't you like teaming up?"_

Mun waved his hand at the Hercules Titan, activating the nanites he had left inside the mech. It shot backward at terrific speed, crashing into the Zeus Titan halfway down the corridor. They both exploded in a most spectacular fashion.

"Did you kill the pilots?" Ossyra asked, craning his neck to see.

"No, they're just defeated."

Wan stepped into the room, causing Ossyra to jump again because he did it so fast. Mun gave Wan a fresh dose of crack.

"Oh, I get it. Kinetics!"

Ossyra's reward was a blast of crack.

"Fresh from Praetoria," Mun nodded. Ossyra's eyes dilated.

"You're from another dimension, too? When I arrived here, my DNA had to be rewritten so that I could exist."

It was Mun's turn to raise eyebrows.

"You believe in the Akashic Records, too?"

"It's the only explanation as to why I have two hooves instead of four."

"My God, I have two D 'n D nerds in my supergroup, now!" Wan lamented.

"What's D 'n D?" they chorused.

The trio simultaneously heard a beep in their heads.

"What was that?" asked Ossyra, ears twitching though they had not 'heard' it. Wan rubbed his face with one hand, wiping off the dusty, smoky residue of battle.

"Time's up. The Kronos Titan has finished warming up."

Ossyra's face fell.

"The Kronos Titan."

"Yeah."

"This base has a freaking _KRONOS TITAN?"_

A deep roar shook the walls and floor.


	2. BlaxXtar

"Book it!" Mun commanded, spreading his hands that released trails of orange and cerulean light.

"Oooh, pretty," Ossyra commented. Mun and Wan then leaped out of the room and did not stop until they hit the wall at the other end of the corridor, whereupon they kicked off the wall and shot down the adjacent corridor. Ossyra blinked in confusion.

"_JUMP!" _he heard the men yell at him in his head, causing him to do so, introducing his cranium to the ceiling fifty feet above.

"Argh!" he yelled more from surprise than pain. He fell to the floor, but felt zero pressure on his joints. He took one tentative hop forward and smashed face-first into the far end of the corridor. He laughed, because he did not feel it. He braced one hoof against the rear wall, and kicked off like a bullet. "Wheeeeee!"

Outside the base, the sun had hidden itself, perhaps behind a cloud. Wan and Mun were looking upward.

"Hey guys! No more Operatives, huh? We must have cleared the map! By the way, jumping is way more fun, now."

When they did not respond, he followed their heavenward gaze.

And found that a god gazed back at him.

"Oh hell."

The trio scattered to the winds as the Kronos-class Titan, fully forty feet tall, unleashed a hurricane of Swarm Missiles. Leaping over its head, Mun reached down with a flash of blue light, but the giant monster was unfazed, still mobile and deadly. Ossyra, who had leapt onto a small building nearby, fired up his aura once more and peppered the faceplate with fireballs, but they did little to impress the Kronos, which fired a round of Gas Swarm Missiles at him, causing him to choke on the toxic fumes. Wan took a flanking position and bounced onto the Titan's tree trunk leg, slicing deeply into the knee joint. The Titan performed a foot stomp with that leg, knocking him clear.

"We can't teleport out of here as long as the Kronos is active; it emits a dampening field!" Mun informed them, relaying the information his nanites had just collected.

"_But that's how we got here!"_ Wan replied with no small alarm. Ossyra was still spluttering, trying to breathe. Mun was trying to get nearer to help him but was cut off by the colossal flamethrower which set the ground and Ossyra's building ablaze. In an ironic twist, the flames ignited the gas clouds, freeing Ossyra from the toxic haze, as he was quite comfortable in his element.

"Fighting fire with fire only works on forest fires, not giant robots," Ossyra commented, making little headway with a magical flamethrower of his own. He leapt to Mun, who gave him bright blue crack to feast on. That did not change the tide of the battle, though; not even when Mun reached to the Titan with flashes of red light, transferring its energy into their bodies to strengthen them. Every time Wan tried to jump onto it, it would stomp the ground with one huge foot, shaking him off like a bothersome ant.

"Something tells me we're not making progress," Wan remarked. The situation got worse: the Kronos pilot came down off his power trip, electing to call for backup instead of shooting thin air. The area was quickly crowded with Malta Operatives and their smaller Titans. The trio was swiftly backed into a corner; not even Mun's energy-draining powers and Ossyra's fiery blasts could keep up with the sheer volume of enemy firepower.

"Should have left me in jail!" Ossyra told Wan, who was busy hitting Operatives for six.

"Today is a good day to die," said Mun, bringing down one of the myriad smaller Titans with precision shooting. His bright blue crack was not enough to counteract the twenty or more Sappers whose guns were constantly draining them. Wan fell to his knees, exhausted at last. Black Kevlar suits closed in, various weapons drawn, but the samurai was undaunted, his eyes lucid.

"No," he said, "There is _another_."

It was a quiet thing, at first. A low musical tone resounded through the crowd of Malta Operatives, coalescing in a black cloud, out of which emerged… a small girl dressed for school. She had purple pigtails sticking out the top of her head. The only thing odd about her was her eyes, from which the light of stars sparkled.

"Hello, Lillian," Wan greeted her. Though he knelt, her head barely reached his top hat.

"You're not wearing pants!" Lillian accused him, finger pointed.

"I forgot them in my base," Wan grumbled. He was, indeed, wearing nothing below his fine black tuxedo but white briefs and a pair of fishnet stockings. Lillian wrinkled her tiny nose.

"Mom says you're creepy."

"I can't help what Ceres thinks."

"Who is _she_?" Ossyra demanded, quite forgetting the enemy military surrounding him.

"Lillian, this is our centaur, Ossyra, who is a Fire Blaster. Ossyra, this is Lillian, who has many names," Mun introduced them.

"I'm not following. Wan, how was she able to teleport inside here?"

"My good man, she did _not_ teleport."

Ossyra's ears twitched again.

"She… she didn't?"

Mun looked at her.

"She has always been here."

At that point, the Malta military, Kronos Titan included, were so irreversibly confused that they had forgotten to shoot their prisoners. On the western dock, George finally woke up, and shook Tammy awake, who smacked Gerald awake, who kicked Burk awake.

"What's going on?" Burk asked, rubbing his arm. "Oh God, my head is killing me."

"That guy knocked all of us out. The side of your head is swelling like a grapefruit," Tammy told George, while holding her own head. Gerald said nothing, but climbed a nearby stack of shipping containers to get a view of the inner base grounds.

"The Kronos Titan's just outside the main building, with a whole crowd of us, and there is something…"

The others joined him atop the stack of boxes and whipped out their handy black ops binoculars.

"Why is there a schoolgirl next to our prisoner, that guy who knocked us out and some pants-less guy?" Burk wondered. The Operatives at the scene were all wondering the same thing. As such, they were rather hesitant to shoot her, even with their nonlethal Sapper guns.

"Ugh… my head…" Lillian complained, gripping her purple hair with both her petite hands. "I feel something pulling me…"

"You don't have to be afraid," Wan soothed her.

"Someone is calling me! I feel... I feel…!"

"Just let go," Mun placated her. Lillian dropped her hands.

"_MOTHER!_" she shrieked. A vortex of negative energy began rippling out of the girl's body… faster, faster it swirled, finally exploding with dark matter, causing the foundations of the Malta base to shudder! What stood in her place was a monstrous being, eight feet tall, arrayed in smooth black and white armour from its feet to its terrifying head… was it a head? It possessed two perfectly spherical, glowing blue eyes, a gap where its nose should have been, and a square jaw that seemed fixed in a terrible grimace of pain. When it opened its mouth, the Operatives heard children laughing, women crying and men screaming, all at once. Above this horrid cacophony of sound rose a voice wrenched from the far reaches of the Netherworld:

"**I am… I am…!"**

The Malta Operatives were no longer confused. However, in the moment they brought their multitudes of weapons to bear on the awful creature, it brought up its fists, the musculature of his arms bunching with terrific tension as he overflowed with negative energy. No less than sixteen Operatives in his immediate vicinity gasped and fell to the ground, drained of all their energy, even their very spirits, but what diminished them to the point of death served to increase the fell apparition a hundredfold! It flung back its head with a cosmic roar of triumph:

"_**I AM THE BLACK STAR!"**_

At this cue, Wan, Mun and Ossyra leaped out of the way as sixteen more Operatives opened full automatic gunfire on the abomination of nature. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the thing's armour as it knelt, its dreadful hands spread out at either side as more negative energy encircled its feet. It stood suddenly, crossing its arms before its chest, tearing the energy of ten Operatives from their bodies, defeating them, and only empowering itself by another order of magnitude!

Back on the western dock, George dropped his binoculars, the colour draining from his face.

"That thing, it's…"

The Black Star hunched over, fists clenched yet again as dark spirals emanated from its body, shaking the ground underfoot as it burst outward into a huger, heavier yet translucent aberration that, though bipedal, looked like the forsaken lovechild of a rhinoceros and a coconut crab. It, too, crossed its thick arms across its chest, stealing life energy from ten more Operatives who collapsed, barely alive. The monster leaped into the air, dark energies spiraling out of its being with another lightning crash of power. What replaced its rhinoceros/crab form was a small, multi-tentacle creature resembling nothing in the world so much as a squid crossed with a sea anemone. One hundred feet above ground, the squid/anemone mutant spat down a ball of pure liquid darkness that blew up, shattering the ground beneath the Operatives and their shiny metal toys, flinging hundreds of them in all directions.

It was not done.

It fell to Earth, reared back its multi-tentacle head and spat a murky, conical hurricane that cleared a pathway of sixty feet. Titans and Operatives alike were hurled as though dust in the wind.

The Kronos itself entered the fray. Now that its comrades had been thrown clear, it released every last missile and plasma blast it could muster in a fantastic show of death. Ground zero collapsed into the ocean, but when the smoke cleared, there the Black Star floated, utterly unharmed in his small squid/anemone form.

"Impossible," the Kronos pilot shook his head. "Nothing could survive that."

In response, the Black Star darted through the air, reverted to its humanoid form, pulled back one fist and smashed the Kronos full in the faceplate with a gargantuan punch, busting clear through the thick armour plating with but one hand. The Kronos pilot looked at the huge fist which had stopped a centimeter from turning his face into NutriPaste. He promptly released the contents of his bowels and fainted dead away. The Black Star pulled back his fist, bringing much of the faceplate with it. It landed with a crunch between the inert Titan's legs. Brushing the armour off, it glared black holes at the Operatives, who immediately turned tail and fled.

Seizing this opportunity, Mun reactivated his orange and cerulean energy field, using it to jump the forty feet into the cockpit. He shouldered the stinky, comatose pilot aside and released his nanites into the Titan's core systems. Moments later, the dampening field was gone. The four members of Coil, their mission finally complete, teleported far, far away from that godforsaken place.

On the western dock, Burk dropped his binoculars. He stole a menthol cigarette from George, pulled his balaclava below his chin and lit up.

"That is one em-effing Warshade."


End file.
